The local swimming hole
Growing up on a hillside neighborhood above the Allegheny River in Lawrenceville included some wild and crazy times — like those at our own private swimming hole down at the river.
Actually, it wasn’t in Lawrenceville at all, but across the river in Etna. We called it “Bare Butt Beach,” BAB for short.
Our group of BAB swimmers usually included me and my brothers Skip and Larry and our friends Herky, Freddie and Billy. Billy’s brother Willy came along sometimes, for the walk not the water. He thought we’d lost our minds. We usually had the beach to ourselves, so maybe we had.
To get there, we had to walk about three miles, going east along Butler Street, across the 62nd Street Bridge to Sharpsburg and west along Route 28 towards Millvale, passing factories such as Blaw-Knox and Hubbards, and the Carnegie-Illinois steel mill. All gone now.
From Route 28, we made our way down the rugged hillside to the river. We cautiously crossed two busy railroad lines to the river’s edge, across from where we started at the foot of Butler Street on the Lawrenceville side of the river. Our dipping and diving point was along a small section of sandy beach where Pine Creek flowed into the river.
The train conductors going by must have thought we were nuts and often blew their whistles at us. What fun times we had there.
Why we called it Bare Butt Beach is a mystery. We went there wearing our swim suits and went home wet.
When we didn’t want to do the long walk, we made our way down to the beachless side of the river in Lawrenceville, across from BAB. To get to the river from Butler Street, we had to cross four or five railroad tracks, going in between train cars, and then climb or crawl through about a hundred yards of large slabs of broken concrete and dark, smelly tunnels.
This dangerous maze was part of the remains of a long-abandoned oil refinery. Nothing like the real beach on the other side, but much closer to home.
Much of the broken concrete jutted out into the river. Some of us actually dove off of the larger concrete slabs, come what may. It was a dangerous place to play. In the end, the long walk to the other side of the river proved worth the effort. BAB was better.
Today, that maze of broken concrete and tunnels, our shortcut to the river, is a large parking lot, and Lawrenceville is now one of Pittsburgh’s upscale places to live.
The real BAB across the river is still there, but smaller. The railroad between Route 28 and the river remains busy. There is still a sandy beach, but no swimmers.
Stories about places on the river like BAB are hard to come by now. Most of the nearby businesses and gathering places of days gone by are … gone. The Holmes Home for the Aged is now a large shopping center. The Hanlon-Gregory Galvanizing plant is being razed for townhouses. The stores at 57th Street are closed, but several new businesses have opened along Butler Street.
After more than 100 years, the once-popular Slovenian Hall (Slovenski Dom) recently was sold. Oil storage tanks east of the old site on the river remain. Other places, like Hunter’s Saw Mill, never really recovered from the March 1936 Allegheny River flood.
One local business that remains is Nied’s Hotel and Bar at 55th and Butler, continuing there after more than 76 years. The building’s been there since before 1900. Nieds’s has become a popular nightspot in recent years and currently offers live musical entertainment weekly.
When our BAB swimmers got older, some of us would meet at Nied’s and trade stories about our two river beaches. Our stories intrigued the customers so much so that Ted Nied’s son, Paul, gave us drinks on the house.
Well, at least the first round.